Some days back I visited the main hospital in
Srinagar, the SMHS hospital that sits in the jumbled center of this mangled
city. Inside the hospital the scenes resembled an aftermath of a war, where
sufferings and ordeals formed a seemingly endless queue. I, along with my
friend (a senior doctor) was coordinating the visit of specialists from
mainland India for critical Ophthalmological surgical intervention for victims
hit by pellets. For all the guts, I may have or may not have gathered from
living decades of conflict in Kashmir, I could not stay for long in the
inpatient area. You looked at the closed bandaged eyes, or the pierced the
blood shot attempting to open yet closed eyes, or the shut and dark eyelids
those were dotted with countless holes, and you would want to breakdown in a
lonely corner, somewhere in a dark seclusion where none could see my
helplessness. Withdrew hurriedly from what I could not bear to witness, did not
want to believe and wished had never happened in the first place. I retreated
to a runaway that knew a denial was not to be.

Back home the images of the hospital came flashing in
front of my eyes, before a ‘black out evening’ (when we are supposed to shut
out all lights in Kashmir as a mark of protest) and frighteningly sleepless
nights. A horrendous disquietude prevailed all along. The feeling of infirmity
pushed me to try how it would feel for these kids to be in a permanent dark,
and the next day morning I tied a cloth on my eyes, pretending to be blind. The
pretending could not last for more than two hours, during which I banged on two
doors hitting my head once, shattered a glass of water, slipped on the lobby
steps, while my books, my papers and my laptop pretended to not know me
anymore. Behind the tied cloth on my eyes, was a fearsome darkness with no end,
an eclipse where no planets moved, where the night knew no borders. Then I thought
about the kids in the hospital, with pierced and shuteyes, shuddered at the
unspeakably horrendous and petrifyingly looming darkness. And I sunk again in a
saddening recluse !

Main kis ke hath pe apna lahu talash karun,

Tamam sheher (Mulk) ne pehnay hue hain dastaanay.

While there seem no respite in the ‘dark hours’ in
Kashmir, our enforced darkness remains willfully invisible to mainland India,
where a major part of its ‘blaringly noise emitting’ media and political
enterprises are busy pushing Kashmir further to the margins, measuring
Kashmiris by their scale of‘collective
conscience’. In such manufactured debates and rhetoric, that is only aimed to
harden the common mindset in India and take it further away from facts, the truth
is concealed and layers of deceptive falsity are added under the premise of
‘national interest’.

In this manufactured rhetoric, where anchors and
politicians in India have taken the task of ‘Posturing and Pontification’, too
seriously, the larger question remains unanswered. Has this vile rhetoric actually
helped the nation or harmed it? And does this rhetoric have any power to
actually change the truth on Kashmir or to even alter it? Has vilifying
Kashmiris day in and day out not actually pushed them further to the margins,
to a point of no return?

That the Kashmir issue exists as a political conflict for
decades, that consumed thousands of innocent lives is undeniable. And the
refusal to accept this fact as willful blindness on Kashmir is lamentable.

Ironically silence of mainland India comes from political
calculations in other states of India, where any talk on Kashmir is treated as
anti-national. But such silence can’t ensure closure of factuality for long. The
‘pressure cooker’ in Kashmir will only keep simmering, till the need for a
resolution dawns on them. The Indian political state, and the media that sides
with these political powerhouses, are only doing the greatest disservice to the
idea of India, as a nation, by confiscating the truth and pretending that all
is well, facts being contrary to that. While the Kashmir issue is not any easy
puzzle to solve, with so may claimants and stakeholders, an initiative has to
be made somewhere. We have already lost
two generations in Kashmir to a bloody conflict, while the third generation
that grew amidst the violent upheaval under the shadow of guns, crackdowns,
humiliations, deaths and denial has been hardened by the contretemps of this
mayhem.Taking them on board may not be
easy but there is no other option, for their unaddressed anger will only
cascade into a harder stance for coming generations, making peace more elusive
for Kashmir.

Given
the complexity of the Kashmir issue, no abstract papers can work. But an honest
initiative at resolution has to be made. And
that initiative will not and cannot flow from the barrel of the gun, for we
have seen too many wars and tragedies in Kashmir for decades. That initiative
will have to start from realization of the issue and acceptance of the need of
a resolution. New Delhi, Islamabad and Srinagar will someday, one day have to
talk, but how much innocent blood that realization seeks, only providence
knows.

Till that realization dawns on these powers, may Allah
save the kids of Kashmir and may Allah restore the sight of the willful blind
outside Kashmir.

It
was called ‘The Dewakhaane’, a large room, second story, front of the house,
all made of wood; tall windows carved on arches supported by wooden pillars in
uniform periodicity and a huge folding partition towards the extreme right corner,
that led into another big room. Folding the wooden partition in a cascade could
merge the two large rooms. The
‘Dewakhaane’ had its tall windows opening on to the waterway that originated
from the nearby sulphur spring. And parallel to the narrow waterway ran a cobblestone
pathway, running across an older stone and wood mosque, which stood taller than
any building in the Mohalla. The huge mosque with its seemingly dark and large
staircase, which I would never dare to explore even though being just across the
narrow waterway and the cobblestone paved street, often seemed eerie to me. I would
often imagine some secrets hiding in the corners of this tall structure, not
only for the enormity of its size but also for the restrained placidity it
maintained, like a very old monk in some stoic deep meditation. And the kid in
me would not dare disturb the monk in its silent prayer.

Every
evening, by the steps of the narrow waterway, womenfolk would assemble to wash
clothes by its stone steps, or at other times to just chatter their small town
gossip.

Many
evenings, especially Thursdays and Fridays, my Granny, a tall women of a frail
skeleton, clad in her Afghan Burka, the front side of which would be neatly
folded on her head, to expose her bonny face but cover her body, would walk the
cobblestone path, further ahead joined the main road leading to ‘Reshmoul
Saebun Astaan’ (Shrine of the local patron saint Baba Hyder Reshi also known as Resh Moul Saeb or Resh Mir Saeb).
I would sometimes accompany her to the Shrine, over this stone path converging
to the metaled bisecting road, that crossed a few mosques on the left, a
graveyard on the foothills on the right and then turned across the old
telephone exchange, opening up to a wide market near the clear spring, turning
up ahead on the left to the Shrine. The Shrine courtyard, all of old stone and
some of modern mortar, was accessible from two opposite sides, leading to sanctum
of a wide square verandah, latticed windows inside with green interiors, where
the saint had his final resting place.

Within
the wooden partitions of the shrine were held prayers, some in murmurs, while
others in loud callings. Countless threads hanging by the shine grill, spoke of
the prayer requests of earlier visitors to the shrine, of fervent appeals to
the saint, many of the older threads having been replaced by new requests. My Granny
would often stand in one of the corners of the shrine, her skeletal hands risen
in prayer and lips murmuring at her own pace. Many a time tears would tickle
down bonny cheeks, running down all along the chin and then dropping off to
infinite spaces beyond that. I imagined these ‘infinite spaces’ to run along
the endless creases of her ‘Burka’, then getting lost in the intricate thread
work that lay on its hem. Somewhere within these running threads and flowing
creases lay a lifetime of struggle and prayers of my Granny. My Grandfather had
passed away when I was still a toddler, and the responsibility of the family
immediately had shifted to my Granny. Even during hard days, she never forgot
to carry in her hands a few two rupees and five rupee notes as a token
presentment to the shrine caretakers. The shrine, a four-sided structure,
constructed on a high quadrilateral plain, lorded over the area with a towering
spire in the center of a pyramidal sloping roof.

On Fridays the air would reverberate with ‘Daroud-o-Azkaar’, in loud unison, which
has now got imprinted in my mind. Whenever I hear these ‘Daoud-o-Azkar’, am transported back to the old cobblestone path, the
narrow water channel born out of the warm sulphur spring, memories often pulling
me towards the safe recluse of that shrine.

On
one such lazing Autumn Friday of October in the late 80’s, the peace of a post
Friday prayers, was shattered by some commotion. As we stood by the edge of the
roofed verandah of the shrine, Granny as usual praying teary eyed and the kid
holding by the hem of her burka lost aimlessly in this routine, we heard
slogans, then in the distance and now closing in. A seemingly large protest was
marching down the Reshi Bazaar, gathering a din that rose over the murmuring
prayers of the shrine. The pitch of slogans was rising further, like the dust
that precedes a storm; slogans incomprehensible to the kid in me. And then we
heard shots being fired followed by a strange pungent smell. Suddenly Granny
drew me closer to her, trying to protect me in her strong bonny arms, part of
her Burqa covering my body, while repeating loudly ‘Parvardigaara now’jaawan karr rae’ch, assi’ karr raham’ (Allah
please save these youngsters, have mercy on us). From slogans, the protests
turned to a pandemonium and then a stampede of sorts. From one side of the
shrine people were fleeing, trying to find a way out from the other side. The
other gate of the shrine suddenly became a bottleneck, some people falling in
the stampede and few left in torn clothes or barefooted. Terrified, Granny,
like other womenfolk within the Shrine, in the hope of safety, rushed closer to
inner sanctorum of the shrine, close to where the patron and his twenty-one khulafa
have been interred. Then there were loud wails and prayers, each aiming to
outdo each other in decibels and reach, trying to awaken the saint.

We
reached home close to evening, coughing, drained, terrified and teary. It was
not deemed safe to leave the shrine even after an hour had passed since the
last remains of any protestor resistance was silenced by the uniformed. The
night passed partly awake to pockets of sloganeering or cries in the distant
neighborhood. A few days later heard many young boys of the neighborhood, most
of them school going lads, had been picked up by men in uniform, for apparently
no reason. Four of them, one of who was a school topper and aiming to become a
lecturer, were held for months together, facing torture and impalement. He was
released late next spring with a fractured hand (local talk was that his hands
had been rolled on with something heavy during torture), to be arrested again
on seemingly trumped up charges, then his family ‘securing a release’ somewhere
by the beginning of next winter.

Two
autumns later, when I was in middle school and Granny went bed ridden due to
ailment, militancy sprung up in Kashmir and three of these boys became early
converts to the gun.

My
Granny passed away on a cold winter day in Srinagar, when a major part of the
city was under its umpteenth curfew and its youth were fleeing a death cavalry
march.

Last
month when I visited the Shrine with my boss, I wanted to escape to the same
corner, by the edge of the roofed verandah, where I used to hold the hem of
Granny’s burka, and shed a tear in prayer for the young lad who never became a
lecturer and was shot dead in the alleys of his old town, or the young boys who
never came back home.